Tuesday, January 31, 2017

All You Need to Know About the Uttar Pradesh Elections

The Uttar Pradesh elections are now just
round the corner (the polling in the first phase begins on 11th February),
and it seems like within the last few days, countless new (albeit not
surprising) developments have taken place. The biggest, and perhaps most
significant, of these being the announcement of an alliance between the
Samajwadi Party and the Indian National Congress. There had been rumors flying
around that, whenever Akhilesh Yadav wasn’t busy diffusing his family crisis, he
was holding talks with senior congress leaders (including Priyanka Gandhi no
less) to finalize seat-sharing arrangements. Now that the cat is finally out of
the bag, it becomes important to discuss what the implications of this alliance
are going to be.

Whether this tie-up helps or hurts Akhilesh in these elections remains to be
seen, but there are clear messages that it sends to the populace of Uttar
Pradesh that is going to start casting its votes from 11th Feb. Firstly,
it makes it clear that Akhilesh Yadav, and by extension the Samajwadi Party,
have no confidence in their chances of winning elections on their own. Perhaps
they are aware of the anger the people of Uttar Pradesh harbor for the utter
lawlessness and misrule they were subjected to during the last five years, or
maybe they are worried about the surge that BJP is currently enjoying in Uttar
Pradesh (further boosted by Prime Minister Modi’s actions to combat black
money), but one thing’s for sure, Akhilesh Yadav is in panic mode.

The second message it clearly sends to the
people is regarding the platform on which the Samajwadi Party is actually
contesting these elections – one that reeks of communal and caste politics. By
tying up with the Congress (which hasn’t been a major stakeholder in Uttar
Pradesh for decades now), Akhilesh has made it clear that he is solely aiming
for a polarization of votes on the basis of religion and caste, and not
necessarily interested in getting votes on the platform of development. This is
further evidenced by the fact that, apart from rampant nepotism (both the SP
and the Congress excel in Parivaar Wad),
the two parties have nothing in common. As far as the Congress is concerned,
this is yet another opportunity for it to ride the coattails of a more
politically relevant party in a state where it doesn’t stand a chance of making
any strides on its own. How else could one explain a so called ‘national party’
agreeing to contest on just 105 seats?

The BSP too made its fair share of news recently. Always notorious for giving
those with criminal backgrounds tickets for contesting elections, Mayawati welcomed
former gangster Mukhtar Ansari to her party. Ansari defected from the Samajwadi
Party and decided to join BSP after Mayawati gave him, and two of his
family members, three seats to contest elections from. While Ansari will be
contesting from Mau, his sons Abbas and Sibagatullah will be contesting from
Ghosi and Mohammadabad, respectively. This recent update is particularly
significant because it proves that the BSP has no intentions of reducing UP’s
alarming crime rate and if voted to power, will only lead to more lawlessness
and corruption. It also proves that it’s not just the Congress and the SP that
believe inParivaar Wad asBSP too doesn’t mind abiding by that
policy.

If it wasn’t clear enough before, it has
certainly become so now – the people of Uttar Pradesh have only one viable
party that they could vote for, one that would combat corruption and
lawlessness, not fill up the entire state cabinet with members of one family
and only contest elections on the platform of development. In fact just
recently, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had said that he was ‘upset’ that a
mahagathbandancould not have been
formed in UP and that he was praying for the victory of the SP + Congress
alliance. If that doesn’t reinforce the fact that this is a BJP vs All
election, nothing else will. As such, it becomes absolutely imperative for the
populace of UP to cast their ballots for BJP if they want to see their state
put on the path to progress and prosperity.

Politically it is a brilliant move. one can easily call them natural alliesBoth have similar vote banksBoth have similar party structure(pariwar vaad) Both have similar governance Habits (scams)Both are land mafias

I feel now it is BJP's turn to counter their move and check-mate them.

With Amit Shah in UP, there is a lot of hope that BJP will perform better than ever and take a landslide victory.